Overview

As researchers bring their analytic skills to bear on contemporary archaeological tourism, they find that it is as much about the present as the past. Philip Duke’s study of tourists gazing at the remains of Bronze Age Crete highlights this nexus between past and present, between exotic and mundane. Using personal diaries, ethnographic interviews, site guidebooks, and tourist brochures, Duke helps us understand the impact that archaeological sites, museums and the constructed past have on tourists’ view of their own culture, how it legitimizes class inequality at home as well as on the island of Crete, both Minoan and modern.

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9781598741421

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Reviews

As a work of applied archaeological ethnography Duke marvelously negotiates his way between the subjective and objective. His inclusion of selected diary notes, tables analyzing tourist facilities, and guidebooks at more than a dozen sites is highly original and establishes new worthwhile methodologies for this kind of study. His comparative discussion of market-oriented cultural heritage exploitation and socially-focused and community-owned heritage use raises issues that should be considered by all parties involved with archaeological sites and tourism. This group includes archaeologists who can not and mustnot ignore the political and social ramifications of their work. From the Foreword by Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois 'This short book offers both professional and gnereal readers a perspective that, while debated in archaeological circles, has received minimal attention in other venues. What some have termed the archaeology of the contemporary past is as much about the present as it is about antiquity. In this topical and appealing book, [Duke] explores the wide range of political, cultural, and ethical issues that are at play in all archaeological endeavors. Summing up: Recommended.' CHOICE

"""As a work of applied archaeological ethnography Duke marvelously negotiates his way between the subjective and objective. His inclusion of selected diary notes, tables analyzing tourist facilities, and guidebooks at more than a dozen sites is highly original and establishes new worthwhile methodologies for this kind of study. His comparative discussion of market-oriented cultural heritage exploitation and socially-focused and community-owned heritage use raises issues that should be considered by all parties involved with archaeological sites and tourism. This group includes archaeologists who can not and mustnot ignore the political and social ramifications of their work."" From the Foreword by Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois 'This short book offers both professional and gnereal readers a perspective that, while debated in archaeological circles, has received minimal attention in other venues. What some have termed the archaeology of the contemporary past is as much about the present as it is about antiquity. In this topical and appealing book, [Duke] explores the wide range of political, cultural, and ethical issues that are at play in all archaeological endeavors. Summing up: Recommended.' CHOICE"

Author Information

Philip Duke is professor of anthropology at Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado, where he has taught since 1980. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Until recently, his professional work has been conducted on the archaeology of western North America, about which he has written Points in Time: Structure and Event in a Late Northern Plains Hunting Society. He is co-editor of Beyond Subsistence: Plains Archaeology and the Postprocessual Critique and of Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics . His research specialties include public archaeology and repatriation issues. He also works with the Ludlow Collective at the archaeological site of the 1914 Ludlow massacre near Trinidad, Colorado.

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